Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I am certainly not, but I am very glad that the Minister raises that point. One challenge for any Administration, and for any individual electoral registration officer, is identifying where the people who are eligible to vote live. Were we to follow the practice that the Minister suggested that I might be heading towards, we would have to knock on the doors not just of expatriates but of everybody who happens to live abroad. We do not know where they live. The Foreign Office missions do not keep a full register of British expatriates resident in their country. Every ambassador to whom I have spoken on this subject—I have touched on it with a number of them—says, "If only we could have a system whereby we could identify where expatriates live." They would like to have access to such a system so that they could fulfil some of their statutory duties in the event of an emergency, or whatever. We require our citizens overseas to register annually. Citizens within the country are, as the Minister has suggested, sent an annual reminder of who is on the register for their property, but those who are resident overseas are not sent a reminder. If they do not bother to register or if they are not prompted to do so by some diary note that tells them that their registration will fall due, they fall off the register. That is a major inhibitor to people remaining on the register. People have to register every year, whereas many other countries have registration that lasts for the duration of their Parliament or for a fixed period of time. Some countries have 10-year registration; I think that that would be innovative and would deal with the problem. The second practical problem for expatriates is that they have to have their identity confirmed on the registration form by another British citizen who is also on the register. As we know from our earlier discussions, only 14,000 such people live overseas. Many people who might like to vote while living overseas cannot, because they cannot find anybody who meets the criteria and is eligible to certify that they are who they say they are. The Government put forward a consultation on individual voter registration that was due to be published last June. We have not heard the results yet, so the debate has been moved not one step further. The fact that the Bill says nothing about voter registration is another deficiency, and a missed opportunity. Expatriates have the benefit of a very clear identifier. I am not allowed to use audiovisual props in the Chamber, but I am holding British passport in my right hand. It has a single-number identifier, and allowing expatriates to verify that they are British by use of their passport number would overcome the problem of identity confirmation. I accept that there are some data protection issues, but unfortunately the Government have chosen not to go down that route, even though it would make it easier for people to register and therefore to vote. I have tried the patience of the House and Ministers perhaps a little too long this evening, so I shall end by saying that people abroad who register to vote have to do so remotely. Most do so by post, which works well in the UK. Participation in postal voting by citizens resident here is rising each year, and I welcome that.